


Denying the Battle

by ewonder2001



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Angst, Drama, Episode Related, F/M, M/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-13
Updated: 2006-03-13
Packaged: 2019-02-02 05:42:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12720789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ewonder2001/pseuds/ewonder2001
Summary: This is a meditation on what might have been happening in Daniel's head during the final showdown in the episode Absolute Power.





	Denying the Battle

**Author's Note:**

> Note from the archivists: this story was originally archived at [The Alpha Gate](https://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Alpha_Gate), a Stargate SG-1 archive, which began migration to the AO3 in 2017 when its hosting software, eFiction, was no longer receiving support. To preserve the archive, we began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in November 2017. We e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are this creator and it hasn't transferred to your AO3 account, please contact us using the e-mail address on [The Alpha Gate collection profile](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/thealphagate).

  
Author's notes: Daniel has the memories of the Goa'uld in his head, so this is not a very nice story. I can't really be any more specific than that! Mainly J/D but also other m/m, and Daniel/Sha're.  


* * *

The Jade Palace was the most beautiful place in any of the systems. I conceived it in my mind, and gave birth to it nine lifetimes later, a present for my Empress. Birds sang in airy courtyards, fountains sparkled in the noonday sun. I had the planet's rotation changed so that it was always midday in my home, the sun turning the jade arches translucent with my glory. When I tired of daytime, it was dark in the chambers below. Prisoners, heretics, those who did not appreciate my bounty, whiled away their short lives down there for my pleasure.

So much beauty to fall into such darkness. The ships of Apophis came when I was away and slagged my palace from the skies. My empress died the true death that day, never to be reborn. May a thousand curses rain from the sky on the head of my brother Apophis. May he die the true death. And may I be there to see it.

It is possible, if one uses the right mind device, to bend jade into any shape or form the heart desires. An ugly beauty can twist it to speak the things that cannot be said.

* * *

I was seventeen when the soldiers of Apophis took me. My village was a small one on the banks of the Nile, where we fished and grew the grains that fed the mighty. But we were of no account, my father always said. We were too low, too small to be noticed. But one day the priest of Apophis passed through our village. I was toiling on our boat, the pride of my family, making the small repairs needed to keep it river-worthy. My tunic was laid aside in the hot shade, my muscles rippling as I worked. Or so they told me later. I couldn't see his face for the sweat stinging my eyes, but he could see mine.

"This one," he said. His voice was old and querulous. What threat could such a one be, I thought in the folly of youth. A hundred lifetimes ago.

The soldiers of Apophis dragged me over to the priest, where he sat enthroned on his barge at the water's edge, taking his ease. I thought he was going to kiss me, to embrace me like father did, when he pressed his knuckles to my forehead. But there was a fiery pain and I remember thinking that I could see his eyes, and that they were windows into nothing. When I awoke, there was a gold mark on my forehead. It has never gone away.

I found myself on sheets of silk, my body perfumed, and the stink of the river and honest sweat a distant memory. When I saw my face in a glass, I didn't recognise it, with those huge eyes rimmed with kohl, and the gold symbol still burning on my skin. A shadow loomed in the glass behind me. I could not see him clearly, the master of my new life, but somehow I knew that this was he. So I turned to face him head-on, as my father had always taught me.

He was beautiful in a way that I had not known in my short life. Naked, though he wore clothes, the brief silk and jewels hiding nothing from my hungry gaze. In that moment, even missing my father as I did, my old life next to the river, I knew that I wanted this man, wanted what he had to offer me. And so I knelt at the feet of Apophis and worshipped my god. Two years later, when I was nineteen, he took me for his own. And in all the lifetimes since, we have never parted.

He lives inside my skull, the monster that moves my limbs and sucks cock with my choked up throat. My hatred for him is greater than the bounds of time and space.

* * *

My breasts were high and taut, the nipples conducting the touch of his fingers like lightning from the skies. He called it electricity, my Danyel, but I knew better. It was love. No other man's touch did to me what his could do. And when he moved inside me, the lightning took up residence in my body. He made me scream, did my Danyel.

She makes me scream also. Sometimes, when the mood takes her, she lets me have a voice. The peals of anguish, of a grief beyond solace, echo around her palace. Their palace. And when Apophis fucks her, planting the seed of his host deep inside me, they play together in my head. 

I never knew that I could hate and hate and it would mean nothing. Be nothing.

* * *

Voices. Too many voices in my head. Like Machello, but legion. Help me. Jack. Help me.

* * *

My empress was the Eldest. When she crawled out of the primordial slime and took her first host, there was nothing but silences and green, empty spaces. We filled that silence with music, her and I. We shaped a people and we built a wall to keep the others out. The other, jealous gods. But the wall was never high enough, or strong enough.

So we built our home in the stars and left the dynasties to their fate. My people believe that the passage of time is a road that loops always in a circle. The great ones rise from the mud and rule with power, their vision far and their strength supreme. But then the rot sets in, they grow fat and soft and feeble, glutted on power till their satiated corpses can hardly move. And when the young ones rise up and part head from body, making their living deaths a death indeed, a new dynasty begins.

So it has been. So it shall always be. But I am a god and I will not walk that path. There will be no end to my power, and I will never grow soft and old. I am the Jade Emperor. I am forever.

* * *

The last time I saw Danyel, I was heavy with the child of the abominations. And heavier with the knowledge of what I must go back to, of how she would rise from her long sleep and take power over me again. We loved gently, he and I, barely moving for fear of harming the life inside me.

He entered me so slowly, so smoothly, it was like my insides were rubbed with silk. I longed for him to take me hard, to love me as he used to do, before the Abomination came to Abydos and took my life for her playground. But he hardly touched me, fucking me slowly, and I think he loves another now. I have loved hundreds, thousands, with this body that is no longer mine. I do not grudge him his sweaty fumbling with another. I know that his heart is mine. That is enough.

Oh Danyel. Ammonet fights to make me hers again. I cannot resist, cannot stop her. Once, I moved my finger, just a little, and we nearly died. I did not know what the glowing button would do, only that it was vital to her that we push it. I moved our finger a quarter of an inch and it was almost enough. The ship was rocked by explosions that should have sent her scaly, blood-sucking corpse to hell, and me with it. But we survived. At least we killed every fucking rebel in the place, and ran the halls red with their traitors' blood.

She punished me terribly. She took Skaara that night and did horrific things to him. Made me watch, made me feel it all. And then romped in bed with her lord, dancing on a thousand graves. So many dead. And I, Danyel, I killed them all. Or she did. I forget.

I am so cold, Danyel, so afraid. Save my baby. Don't let them hurt my baby.

* * *

So cold. So afraid. Help me. Jack. Someone. Anyone.

I hear a voice like cool, smooth marble. I rest my head against it for a moment. Just a moment.

I wake up. It's easier when I'm conscious. Then, I can keep the voices to one at a time, and learn the things that I need to know.

* * *

The first thousand years were the sweetest. I remember the temple, how it echoed with the chants of the priests. How the people knelt on dirt floors and offered me their gold to wear, their oils to soothe, their fragrances so sweet and heady. To be the centre of a universe, the power of life and death, the heart and soul of a land, is something too incredible to describe. Egypt. How I miss it. The Two Lands, where my head dripped with lapis and outshone the Sun. I have known a hundred deserts since, and a million slaves, but nothing feels the same as when I carried the flails of the Pharaohs in my hand, beating the backs of those who raised me on their worthless shoulders.

They ran before me; Ra, Osiris, and all the others. I drove them from the land, and threw Ra's image and sacred things into the Nile. How the people cringed, how they mewled and wept in their fear. But I was the Sun then, and raised myself up for them to worship in his stead. 

My new host was a beautiful thing, his limbs young and tender. Ah, the pleasure of taking his father's life, of going back to his village and slitting the guts of his people and smelling them bleed under the bright Sun. And when they were all dead, and no one was left who could deny it, I took our lithe young body to the palace and declared myself the son of Pharaoh. Who dared say me nay, that was not already mouldering in the Nile? The old king raised me up and kissed my cheek. I grovelled before him, biding my time till I could send him to the afterlife, and all my hated brothers and sisters with him.

Akhenaten, I called myself. And the gods fled before my power and wrath. I put Ammonet in the body of the one they called Beautiful, Nefertiti, my Queen, and made them worship us. Ra had been content to be a god, but in making myself a God-King and the ruler of the land, I grew greater than the other gods and the people worshipped me alone. As it was meant to be, from the beginning of time.

Ammonet said once that I made a mistake, that in expelling our brothers and sisters I made us weak, not strong, and vulnerable to the force of Tau'ri numbers. I beat her host to death for saying it and denied her the sarcophagus. A century or so of swimming in a small tank taught my queen a valuable lesson in obedience. And her new host, this Sha're, is even more beautiful than Nefertiti. 

But sometimes, when I remember the play of light on the Nile and dream of home, I wonder if she might not have been right. I punish her for it, of course, and fucked her to death once before dropping her corpse in the sarcophagus. But it haunts me, the memory of how they rose against me in their thousands and drove us out, burying the Chappa-ai behind us.

There are those who say that nothing is to be learnt from history. But I have never recreated the Two Lands in the countless desert realms I have founded since among the stars. The Jaffa homeworld is the only place where I allow a large population, controlled as it is by a warrior caste with my children and my children's children growing in their guts. But everywhere else, I keep the villages small and the people scattered, their needs simple and the only means of fulfilling them in my hands. I will never be cast out again, as I was in my youth. Never again.

* * *

The Russians have dared to oppose the only sensible course for the defence of this planet against the Goa'uld. It's hard to believe that a nation could be so stupid, so criminally wrong. The satellite defence system cannot be trusted to a single state or even a combination of states. The United Nations is a broken reed, its Security Council a pathetic joke. They jabber and they posture but they do nothing to protect this planet from an enemy that would plant parasites in their heads or make them slaves to be broken and consumed. 

The UN doesn't even know that the threat exists. The Russians know, though, and even had the temerity to start up their stargate again when they realised what we were trying to do. That was easy enough to deal with. I sent the their teams on a one-way trip to Chulak. They're a feisty bunch, those Russian soldiers, and they'll help in the rebellion against the system lords. If nothing else, they will provide useful target practice for the rebel Jaffa. 

I won't share this technology with the Russian government. There is far too much at stake to allow the protection of Earth to those who would fritter it away in petty bickering or the pursuit of the perfect "deterrent" against other nations. Actually, I won't share it with the American government either. I needed them to be my hands and feet, to gather the resources and build the satellites. Democracy used to mean something to me, I know it did, before I gained the wisdom of my ancestors. Now I see it for the folly that it is, giving the mediocre power to feed off the masses and perpetuate nothing more than their own mediocrity. I will put a stop to that. Power is about responsibility, and I will not be found wanting.

"Daniel, don't do this."

I have overridden the failsafes and taken control of the satellite defence system. Moscow has a population of millions. Unlike the selfish officials of their government, I know that they would give their lives gladly to protect the Earth from alien invasion. We will not live under the gold-shod heel of the Goa'uld. The people of Moscow will make the ultimate sacrifice to ensure the future of humanity. I feel their happiness, their excitement, to give their lives in the service of their god. I mean, of the Earth. They will never know how their deaths cement the obedience of the nations of this planet to the defence system that will secure the lives and happiness of all.

"Daniel, don't do this."

That voice sounds real, but it isn't inside my head. The other voices, those of the Chairman of Joint Chiefs and my lapdog assistants, they're like the scratchy soundtrack of an old movie; hardly real, hardly important. Not like the voices inside my head, the memories of the ancestors. Yet this one sounds real. I grope for recollection, a memory of my own.

Jack O'Neill. 

Of course, Jack's here with me in my bunker. Two guns in his pants, both loaded for me.

* * *

I remember this Tau'ri, kneeling in defiance before me, his body begging to be broken on the rack. Ammonet gloats at my side, her long nails curling around my cock. His death will be the most painful that I have contrived in all the centuries of my godhood.

* * *

He takes my child within him to be my first Jaffa. I will enjoy feeling his cock inside me while my infant roils within him. Both of us fucking him, making him into something that will forever give honour to his bloodline. First Prime of Hathor. I will mate him to my consort and their screams will ease my hunger.

* * *

He means nothing to my Danyel. Sweaty fumblings in the dark, soon forgotten. The smell of old socks in a tent, the comfort of home to one who has never known it. Ah, but he knew it with me. Don't listen to him, my Danyel. You are mine. Forever.

* * *

There is hope. I sense it. I see it in the tired, defeated face that swims before me. I have seen that face before. This man means death to Apophis, my lord, my love, my enemy, my life. He will kill the thing that curls inside me and I will know the peace of oblivion at last.

* * *

Jack leans casually against a monitor as if we weren't playing a game of life and death. Typical. When has he ever behaved responsibly, like a true leader? Almost, for a moment, my face flushes with shame. But it is soon suppressed. I have the knowledge of a thousand courts behind me. No wily vizier ever came to me in such a guise. Honest, determined, his eyes sad and tired. They used to crinkle with laughter but not any more. Not for a long time, maybe. 

But there is guile there, all the same. I heard him talking to Sam, plotting behind my back. He's too dumb to hide it. He wasn't trained by the eunuchs in the Forbidden City. They were experts at the knife in the back, its entry so smooth, like being stabbed with a blade made of silk. Deep inside me. Silk inside me, the smooth feeling of love. His love. My love.

Sam Carter sits in her cell, arms around her knees, head hanging. Jack's visit buoyed her for a while but now she droops. Months without sunshine or exercise, her jealous heart feeding on itself, have taken their toll. Jack can't see her on my monitor, a hundred different inputs providing information as I prepare to deal with the Russians.

She can't see the cell next to hers, where Major Davis is chained to a bed. I haven't visited him in weeks. I hoped that sex would silence the voices, give me some peace. I flooded his mouth with my come, and still they tormented me. I rammed his ass with my cock and they never ceased to flail me. A kaleidoscope of memories. A weapons schematic floating in my mind in hieroglyphics. A sculptor carving jade for my throne. The satellites that can blow a mothership away. The taste of someone else's blood on my lips. The feel of a whip, its haft in my hand, its leather on my back. I thought that there could be nothing more terrible than the memories of the Goa'uld, the parasites that have bled a galaxy dry. But that was before I learnt what simmered beneath them, the horrors that give me no sleep, the dreadful yearning agony of the hosts.

I am the only one who can see everything. The sum of Goa'uld knowledge lives within me. I have the genetic memory of an entire race and its victims spewing their wisdom into my brain. The things that Major Davis, drooling on his pillow, doesn't know. The vision that Sam, blind in her petty jealousy, does not have the means to see. And then there's Jack. Dear, simple Jack. Honest, loyal Jack, who fucked me when it suited him and then went running to Sam. Oh dear. Big bad Daniel. He had the Sholva traitor killed and now he's gonna take over the world. Save us Jack. 

I am the only one who sees what needs to be done, and has the guts to do it. I am going to sacrifice a few lives and prevent a global nuclear war, ensuring the survival of the satellite system that protects us from the Goa'uld. Then I will deal with the problems that no one else can touch. No more selfish nations, hoarding their food and wealth. It will all be distributed through me to those who need it most. I have cures for the world's diseases. They'll thank me then, when they're living in a paradise of my making. 

When it's all over, and the world is secure, I can get out of this fucking bunker. Leave Sam and Davis to moulder in their own filth. I'll go to Egypt, set up my residence in the Valley of the Kings. Maybe take over an empty pyramid or two. While I'm there I'll get a team of archaeologists together and see if we can't dig up the village where Apophis murdered my father.

Or I could go to Peking and live in the Forbidden City. Spread the power around a little. The Chinese are an ancient nation with a culture that would serve me well. Abydos is good, too, this time of year. I remember how the sand whips around the edges of the oasis, and the date palms yield their fruit to the eager fingers of my brother. Skaara. Klorel. Which is he now? Son or brother? I forget.

But I haven't forgotten the man in front of me.

I remember the first time Jack made love to me. We had just come back from Kheb. I was crying, a weak fool, having given up the key to winning the battle against the Goa'uld. I let Oma take the Harsesis child, Shifu, and flee the planet. I thought that my heart would break, weeping for Sha're's son and all the grief of failing in my final promise to her. Jack held me in his arms, dried my tears with his thumbs, and then fucked the shit out of me. He called it "making love". Maybe it was. I don't know. He made me groan with pleasure. He drove the nightmares away with his cock and his sarcasm and his great big heart. And afterwards we lay together, telling each other our hopes, our fears, our dreams. He talked about Charlie, I told him about Sha're, and we didn't go to sleep until the sun was streaming into my bedroom the next morning.

I had forgotten that. When he emptied his gun into my forcefield, it felt like he was coming inside me. He had the same look of concentration, of sadness, as when he took me for the first time. I was surprised to find that tears were not leaking down my cheeks.

My first empress was just the same. She was rough and raw, older than me, practised in the ways of love. To her, it was a grief that we could not touch other than through the bodies of our hosts. I wove a jade circlet to be her crown, and promised her that we would rule together for all eternity. Apophis blew that dream away from orbit with his motherships. The Son of Heaven rides the dragon over Moscow tonight. Death is in the air.

My finger strays towards the button that will fire my new orbital weapon. It seems like someone else's finger, alien to me, and I know how vital it is to push that button. Someone is trying to move my finger aside, to nudge it away from its target. Someone who wants me to die. Someone who wants me to live. I can't remember which.

Jack is pleading with me. Begging me to reconsider. Spouting some nonsense about Shifu, how we don't really know what he is, that the Goa'uld memories are controlling my mind. That's crap. First, he shoots at me, *then* he tries reason? That's such a Jack thing to do that I look up at him with amusement, forgetting the button for a moment. Let the Russians wait a little longer for their proportional response.

My loyal Jaffa haven't moved from their posts. They don't turn a hair when Jack begins to strip off his clothes, leering at me with a big, false grin. Sure, Jack. Sex will get me to let the president share the planet's defence system with minds as small as his. My cock twitches anyway. It doesn't seem to know that what Jack is doing isn't real. The only reality is the trigger near my finger and the power to do what needs to be done to save humanity.

I laugh in Jack's face. He curses me. His language is colourful and I enjoy the moment, like I have a thousand others.

Jack kneels before me in worship. I am Apophis, his king and his god.

Jack stands between Skaara and the staff weapons of Ra's Jaffa, and makes my Danyel's toes curl with pleasure. I am Sha're, his sister and rival.

Jack takes Apophis' life and sets me free from my long nightmare. I am Akhenaten, and O'Neill is my saviour.

Jack trails his hand in the fountains of the Forbidden City and dreams of Kheb. I am Yu, the Jade Emperor, and I do not, cannot know him.

Jack holds me in his arms, easing the gun from my clenched hand, and tells me that it will be alright, that he understands addiction, that together we can beat the need that burns inside me like an open flame. I am Daniel Jackson, and I love him.

My finger moves of its own volition. I swear that I didn't do it. The blast that obliterates Moscow is not my doing. It is something inside me, reaching out to do what, in the end, I could not do of my own free will. Not while Jack is watching me, his eyes like an accusation and a promise all in one.

And, finally, I hear a voice that has been absent from the beginning, all voices blending into a single note. 

"Dreams teach. Oma teaches that the evil in my subconscious is too strong to resist. The only way to win is to deny it battle. This is just a dream."

There is a sudden silence, as if someone has switched off a radio. With Moscow gone, millions dead, Sam broken, Teal'c murdered, and Jack the witness to it all, I have played out the madness that is buried in Shifu and I am alone in my own head at last.

For one awful moment, before I wake, I am lonely. Then my eyes are open and it is time to set Shifu free and move on with my life.

I am Daniel Jackson. I will choose my own path. I am free.


End file.
